Open the Book

I said I was going to post finished work to this blog once a week. I haven’t posted in going on three weeks now. Perhaps a global pandemic is a good excuse? In truth, I’ve spent the better part of the last few weeks inside my house with nothing to do but feed and clean myself and my cats. You’d think that I’d have gotten some writing done. Isolation, quarantine, social distancing – whatever you want to call it, seems like a writer’s blessing. After all, isn’t what we always wanted? Time. Guilt-free time. The better part of the globe is shut down currently. There is no where to go, nothing to see and no one to meet. This should be our finest hour as writers. We should emerge in several weeks with novels, manuscripts and pounds of poetry and prose.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t written a single thing.

Sure, I’ve journaled, and drafted the start to a short story, outlined a few more, but nothing concrete. I’ve been bidding the time, justifying the lack of writing with a focus on cooking and reading. I’m almost done with Frank Herbert’s DUNE and I’m thrilled at that. Its been years since I read a book in its entirety outside of school. I’ve been stretching my reading muscles, pushing my stamina and endurance so I do not fatigue as quickly while reading.

Yet writing remains the hurdle. I heard a piece of advice in a podcast a couple weeks ago. They were talking about building healthy habits and the most effective manner to go about it. The guest expert recommended that people just “open the book.” Rather than deciding to read twenty pages, a chapter or whatever, just open the book. Read a word, a line, a page whatever you can. Books don’t have to be read in chapter blocks, they can be read a page at a time. Don’t save thirty minutes at the end of the day to read, read while you wait for your food to finish cooking. Just pick up the book and open it. If you do that every day, you’ll eventually finish the book.

Its simple, but effective. So why not do the same with writing? Why not just open the laptop, open my journal, open the blog- shouldn’t it be that easy? Maybe it is. It in moments like this that writing feels like a mental illness. If someone was this conflicted about riding a bike or watching football you’d try and have them committed. Like an illness I don’t feel that I volunteered to be a writer, it feels thrust upon me, diagnosed by the descriptions of my disposition and behaviors. I am ill-prepared, out of my element and asked to accomplish a task that seems beyond me.

But I did this. I wrote this and I will post this, and it will be a small victory but a victory, nonetheless. I shall start with a word, a line, a page.   

Daily Distractions

I didn’t post last week because I was skiing and that was a reasonable enough excuse to forgive myself from writing anything formal. But I got back home Tuesday and have yet to write anything. I am journaling more, but my formal, cohesive and organized writing still moves at a torturous pace. I could say that its because I don’t have the time, but that is a lie. I am “freelance” which is a fancy way to say sporadically employed. My schedule is completely open and yet I haven’t done anything of substance in the last four days. I’ve barely fed myself the proper amount.


This is a common lament, that people have “wasted” their day, that they’ve “done nothing” and are now behind. I have things that need to be accomplished, they simply aren’t tied to a daily deadline. Whether I do them at 8am or 8pm doesn’t derail my day or my next two-week trajectory. Because of that flexibility in scheduling I procrastinate. I confidently consider myself an expert in procrastination. While I may say that my day needs more “organization”, I have organized my day to accomplish nothing I want to. I’ve gone from Instagram, to Xbox, to Netflix back to Instagram in a well-practiced loop for the past sixteen hours.


Last week was a high-energy week. I was flying from Charleston to Colorado to New York to Colorado and back. I was waking up at dawn everyday and on the slopes skiing by 9 am. My days were full, and with a looming four o’clock deadline for the ski-lifts, I pushed myself to accomplish as much as I could. On days when I was skiing the length of a mountain four times over, the act of making breakfast or bathing seemed benign. The energy expenditure of those actions felt as minor blips to the rest of the day’s action. When I was flying from Queen’s to Denver, the energy expenditure of a subway ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back felt minuscule. Now, back in Charleston, on days when I don’t leave my bed till noon, the act of making breakfast seems Herculean. There are no deadlines, no forced expenditures, every use of energy seems to carry so much more weight with it.


The reason I haven’t changed is the language I used to rationalize and describe it. I shouldn’t address it as “wasting time”, you cannot waste time, it doesn’t just disappear. It is spent on every activity one does. If I am going to change my behavior, I must address the activities I end up accomplishing rather than the ones I intend to accomplish. What do I do? Why do I do them? How can I mitigate that?


It won’t be a matter of me “fitting in” more reading time, but of replacing one activity I already do with reading. I wouldn’t even have to give up the activities, just the time devoted. Rather than four hours a day spent scrolling through memes I could just spend two and devote the other two to freelance job searching.


I encourage you to do the same. Quantify your day, what did you want to accomplish today? What did you accomplish today? What can you change to make what your accomplishments appear more like you intended?

“A Picnic Before Death”

I wrote something new this week and somewhat in theme with Valentine’s day. Meals with those I love are my most treasured times. I will write more about my relationship with food and companionship in a future post. For now, please enjoy this poem and share a meal with someone you love today.  

A Picnic Before Death

I have spread a blanket in the shade of oak trees.

Take off your shoes and hand me your bag,

the journey can wait,

join me for a meal.

There’s water and a thermos of coffee,

wine when you’re ready.

I made meatballs,

they’re still warm and the corn is sweet and ripe,

this time of year.

I have pickles and olives and bread and cheese,

Fresh plums and sweet strawberries.

Eat your fill,

eat it all.

Rest yourself against my knees, dig your toes into the river sand.

Look at that view.

I know your trip isn’t through,

have another bite my friend

I am sharing my food with you.

I know this will end.

I know you will die.

This picnic is all I can do,

let it be enough,

let it be everything,

to show my love for you.

“Larazetto”

I didn’t feel much like writing this week, but in creating this blog I made a commitment to myself and all those following. No less than a post a week, no excuses. I dug around in my files for something to post. An old story or a poem, something that I could re-work for an hour or so and then publish. If only to have something to post, to make me feel that I’m working to be a writer or at least delude myself a little longer. Then I thought “No, that’s lazy, I need to be better than that.” Then the week came and went, and I had nothing new, so here is something old.

I composed this for a creative-writing workshop class in college but find that it still resonates with me. Writing is lonely work. You sit and stare at a screen for hours at a time with no company but the voices in your head. It isn’t fun. It isn’t sexy and you don’t look cool doing it. The goal is ultimately to share it, to let what you created be experienced by others, but even that is a tall order.

It is not a picture, or a painting or a piece of clothing that be seen and observed and appreciated in but a moment. It isn’t a video or a game that requires but passive interaction with. It demands work of its audience. It forces them to read and to think, two activities people largely avoid. Poetry especially. Perhaps that is why I don’t write more of it. I read about half as much as I write which is a complicated way of saying I don’t do enough of either.

This work is inspired by Lazarettos, walled communities were those suffering from leprosy among other ailments would be quarantined. These communities could be in isolated locations or in the middle of large cities. I could only imagine the pain that would come from being surrounded by a world you could never be a part of.

Lazaretto: A trudge through Pariah Alley  

There is no warmth among the vagrant,

our flame has dimmed as,

we linger here in cloudy light,

like cenobites in huddled prayer.

Anticipating the emancipation of eternity,

in the shade of these Lazaretto walls.

–

Frankincense whispers out of hovels on,

salty breeze while dogs lap at the wounds on an old man’s knees.

He does not fear their fangs,

savors the rabid concern, 

welcomes contact of any kind.

–

We have conquered mortal terrors,

discomfort and death cannot dissuade us, 

for the parables of the Lord have vowed us paradise,

release, from this transient dungeon of flesh. 

All we must do, 

is endure the growing absence.

“Him”

The inspiration for this story stems from the radical feminist literature of Valerie Solanas and the speculative fiction of Harlan Ellison. Specifically the SCUM Manifesto by Solanas and the short story “Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” by Ellison. I struggled over whether I should include the process I went through during this story’s composition or why I made the creative choices I did. But if I am going to be a writer, if I am going to share my work, than my work has to stand on its own.

“Him”

There hadn’t been a He for as long as They could remember. Hell, there hadn’t been a She in almost a hundred years. There was only They, and Them. The individual and community. SCUM had taken care of everyone else. Cut them up and killed them. Those They didn’t kill joined the men’s auxiliary and were made into transvestites. After some time even they died. Then there was no He and without a He there could be no She, only Them. That is what They were, they were Them, something neither man nor woman. For how could They be women without men? Female without male? Human without man? They had no language for a people without He.

But here He was. Standing before them naked as an animal. He was ruddy skinned with a beard and long hair like their own. They had been hiking, taking a break from their landscaping activities in town to receive inspiration from the natural world. He was bathing in a stream when they had stopped for water. He had shied away to the tree line but lingered and watched them. They had submerged their canteens and let the auto-purifiers do the rest of the work. The two parties kept eyes on each other. Both felt a tension in their chests but could not vocalize the feeling.

Jordan wadded through the stream towards the trees. They were taller than him but lacked his rough angular features. Instead, Jordan was smooth and sculpted and completely androgynous; their long golden hair parted to revel a delicate and hairless face.

“What is it?” said Taylor. They stayed on the far bank, apprehensive of the creature.

“I don’t know.”

He stepped from the tree line and they could see he had dressed himself. It was a rough tunic made from animal hide. He held a sharpened stick. Jordan opened their pocket and removed a protein-blueberry bar. They held it out towards the man like he was dog.

“Are you hungry?”

He held his stick tight in his hands and pointed it out towards them. He descended the bank slowly. Jordan met them between the trees and stream. They tossed him the bar and he caught it. He sniffed it for a moment before taking a bite.

“Do you speak?” Jordan asked.

He nodded.

“What is your name?”

“Atom.” His voice was deep and throaty and he was missing one of his front teeth on the left side.

They were shocked he could speak. The voice was unlike any they had heard before, there was a vibration they felt in their chest when he spoke.

“It’s pleasant to meet you Atom. I am Jordan.” Jordan smiled, it was an unconscious reflex and it strained their muscles to do it. When had they smiled before? Had they ever?

“I am Taylor!” They called from across the stream.  

“Where are you from?” Jordan asked. He finished chewing his bite and jabbed his stick towards the blue-ridgeline of mountains behind him.

“There.”

“Are there more of you?”

“I’ve only known mother.”

Jordan and Taylor looked at each other. Mother. They had heard the word before, in some data-slate but couldn’t remember what it meant. They hadn’t a mother, no one had had a mother in more than a century. It had been even longer since there had been a father, or mention of one. Now, in this time, when they wanted to make more of them, they went to the labs and used the automated geneticist to create a new one. But even this was a dated practice; without the anxiety of death, there wasn’t much reason to make more of them. 

It took some convincing and several more protein-blueberry bars before Atom came with them. They were fascinated by him, they hadn’t seen anyone like him, or heard of anyone like him. He was dirty and wounded, with lacerations on his legs and arms. They put him through a decom-shower and then introduced him to the auto-doc. He didn’t like it. The machines made him nervous. The whir of generators and machinery pervaded the atmosphere of their homes. As constant as the oxygen they breathed. They didn’t hear it anymore. It was all he could hear.

He had lice on his body and parasites in his blood. He was a carrier for something the auto-doc called “influenza”. They hadn’t heard of it before and they liked the way the auto-bot pronounced the word. Taylor set the auto-chef to prepare a soy-rice curry for all of them. He didn’t want the curry. He asked for more of the protein bars or for meat.

“We don’t eat flesh. No one does.” Jordan said.

“What do you eat?” 

“Everything and anything else. We can have whatever want, whenever we want. We just turn on the auto-chef and input an order.”

“Can it give me meat?”

“No.”

They didn’t report him. There wasn’t anyone to report to. Even if there was there would be no police to respond and detain him. No judge or lawyer to prosecute or defend him. No prison to send him to and definitely no gallows to hang him from. Since men had gone away there was no need for institutions such as those. So they kept him to themselves. They spent most days ordering historical data-slates from the digital libraries. After some months they learned he was a man. An animal of sorts that They thought had been extinct a long time ago. They knew this was a significant find but they were conflicted over what to do. Everything they had been taught told them to reveal him to the community, to Them. However, he made them smile and even though it hurt they liked it. He didn’t like the decom-shower and smelled musty but they liked it. He hunted during dusk and dawn and cooked the meat by hand in their garden. They were enthralled how he carefully removed skin from meat and fat from muscle. He seared the meat then ate it with his hands. They had never cooked before or hunted or gone more than twelve hours without a moment or two in the decom-shower.

In fact, they didn’t do much for themselves. They spent most of their days designing new landscapes that were aesthetically pleasing. They would offer these designs to the community. Those that were accepted were loaded into the scape-skiffs which would begin the terraforming process. Jordan liked to paint and Taylor could sing. They sometimes hosted concerts but attendance was always sparse. Their songs were only about birds and sunrises and soft hills and meadows and flowers and babbling brooks and while They all agreed that those were very pretty things, they were also very boring. Since men had been eliminated everything was pretty. Most of the old cities had been torn down and only a few rebuilt in a much more effective, clean and aesthetically pleasing manner. But in the centuries since it had all become dull. It was stimuli overload. They didn’t appreciate the clean streets, hanging gardens, glittering towers or arabesque murals because they didn’t know anything different. The machines handled everything. They washed and cooked and cleaned and sanitized and scrubbed and filtered and processed and produced and grew and harvested and juiced and pickled and seared and fried and froze and burned and built and destroyed and taught and thought and did everything that They needed them to do.

As a result they had become complacent. Not just Jordan and Taylor but all of Them. They woke up when they wanted, ate what They wanted, did what They wanted, and then went to bed. There had been joy at first when the revolution was still going, when there were still men to capture and convert and kill, when there were still cities to tear down and rebuild and when there were still diseases to combat and professions to automate, still histories to rewrite and books to burn and statues to destroy and memories to be erased and desires to be suppressed and questions to be answered. Then there was nothing left to do but to be one of Them and wait. To pass the days as They saw fit till their clocks run out. But then They figured out how to stop even that. Then there was no more waiting but simply being. There was existence, nothing more and nothing less. They were never hungry, never cold, never hot, never sad, never angry, never in pain or confused. They knew what They needed to know and had no desire to learn more. What was the point when the machines did it all for you.

Atom was learning. He had always done everything for himself. Mother had fallen sick years ago and never recovered. He hunted and trapped and gathered and tanned and sewed and cooked and cleaned and sung for her. He taught himself to make paint from berries and ash and spit. He learned how to use his hand and the stars to navigate at night and how to mix the clay from the cliffs with the mud from the river to sculpt with. Atom was still learning. He first learned to fear the automatons. Then he grew accustomed to the whirl of generators and computers. Then he learned how to use them to his advantage. Taylor had only ever seen the delivery-drones as a means to an ends. Atom wanted to use them for hunting. The idea was novel to Taylor. They ordered data-slates on programming and engineering and set about work. Taylor was excited, they had never learned anything on their own. They had been taught everything they knew. Atom didn’t understand the excitement but he welcomed their enthusiasm.

They lived like this for a time, like a family, which is something they had never heard of and were only now beginning to feel. Taylor taught Atom to read. Atom taught Taylor to cook. They bathed each other and fed each other and in time Jordan took to sleeping with Atom. He was apprehensive at first but then gave in. He felt different than the machines and toys that they were so used to. There was a warmth and an urgency to being with Atom that they couldn’t find anywhere else. The intimacy grew between them, blossoming into a bond that Jordan had no word for. Atom called it love, Mother had taught him about it.

 Then came voting day. The vote was whether to decide to allow the auto-miners to head further into cliffs. The voting-machine in the central hall of Jordan’s house chimed a soft melody to alert Them to vote. Atom approached the machine, he had seen it before but never interacted with it. It had sat dull and empty the past few months but was now awash in colors. There was a handprint glowing next to a glass screen and Atom placed his hand over it. His scarred limb covered the glowing print entirely.

“Scanning” came a smooth voice from a vent on the top of the machine. Atom recoiled and the handprint flashed red. The soft chiming devolved into a siren. Atom clenched his ears and ran for cover. Jordan heard the commotion from their massage parlor and came running.

“What happened?”

“Machine is broken!” cried Atom who hunkered in the corner of the main hall. Jordan moved towards the machine and tried to silence it. They had never heard of this before. There was flashing text across the screen

MALE DETECTED

They heard Them before they saw Them. Sirens like screaming animals rang out clearly across the otherwise gentle and quiet neighborhood. They came from the sky in skiffs and sky buses and in moto-planes. There were dozens of Them rappelling down all dressed in black. They were holding guns but Taylor and Jordan didn’t know what those were and so they weren’t as scared as they should have been. They moved into the house with rapidity and seized and drugged Atom before any of them could process what was happening. Taylor and Jordan were restrained and blindfolded and gagged and thrown into a sky-bus holding cell.

Atom awoke in a facility that looked like the inside of the delivery-drones. There were wires and vents and arms and pistons and screens and the constant drone of a generator hung in the air. He tried to move but he was restrained. He was restrained and he was naked. There was a figure seated in front of him. They had short hair buzzed nearly to the scalp and a pair of black glasses on. They were sharply dressed in something called a uniform, but Atom didn’t know the word.  

“Hello Atom,” the voice was low and guttural, it did not match the face.

“Where am I?”

“You are in the auto-processing facility. This is where our automatons design, program and construct our automatons.” They smiled.

 “Where is Jordan? Where is Taylor?”

“They are in this facility as well, in another room.”

“Why are we here?”

“You broke the law. Taylor broke the law and Jordan broke the law.”

“They said there were no laws.”

“There are always laws.” They stood up and walked towards Atom. “However, thanks to this facility and many thousands like it we rarely have to enforce them.” They paused for a moment “Do you know how long it’s been since we had a man?”

Atom shook his head.  

“Eighty-five years. Well, here at least. Over past the Pacific?” they waved their hand, “Lucky fucks have one just about every twelve years. So, thank you.” They nodded as if experiencing a revelation. “Thank you Atom. Thank you for giving us a project. Things have gotten quite tedious since the last you were cut up. We have been so bored over the years. Nothing to do but train and run drills and sit idle. You have given us all a little excitement. I’m sure you gave Taylor and Jordan quite a lot of excitement.” They looked at his crotch. “You are after all quite the specimen.” 

“Who are you?”

“We are Them. But you can call us The Society.”

“Society?” his tongue struggled with the word.

“Yes. We had a more individualistic name once but it’s fitting now. Inclusive, non-offensive, inconspicuous and utterly true. We do after all represent The Society. The only one. 

Atom looked at his restraints, there was an animalistic fury simmering below the surface of his skin. “What do you want?”

“I want to know how you are, what you are. How did this come to be? Who made you?”

 Atom shook his head as much as he could “Mother made me and no one else. I came from her. I am a part of her.”

They nodded. “Where is this Mother?”

“Dead.”

“Can you prove this?”

Atom stopped his thrashing. “What?”

“Can you prove this creator of you is dead? Do you know of the lab they made you in?”

“No lab.”

They paused. “What?”

“No lab. Just Mother!”

They thanked him for his answers and left the room. They came back later and interrogated Him again. They tortured him, but it had been so long that they weren’t very good at it anymore. They had forgotten how much a man could bleed, or how fast flesh could be flayed from bone, and They had been sure that bones were stronger. They didn’t really understand his crying or why he kept begging them to stop. Didn’t he understand that this was how it was, how it had to be. He told them everything, his time with Jordan and Taylor, what they did together and how they lived. He told them of his childhood spent with mother in the mountains and his years of isolation before he was found. He told them his thoughts, his feelings, his dreams, his fears, he told them anything and everything to get them to stop. He lied, he told the truth, he made up stories, but no matter what he said they never stopped. When he could no longer remain conscious for more than a few minutes at a time they tried to use the auto-docs on him, but it was too late. In all their excitement they had forgotten death. They made notes on their process so they could do it longer next time and then sent his body to be mulched by the auto-processors.

Taylor and Jordan were sent to camps where they were re-educated, and their memories selectively replaced with ones of friendship and community. Afterwards they were released back to their neighborhoods and landscapes. They had lies programmed for their neighbors and themselves whenever a question over what happened arose. Despite the hazy and happy memories of vacation there was a void within them as if an auto-vac had sucked their stomachs out. Jordan had days when a phantom figure crossed her mind and she felt pangs of a hunger for knowledge every morning. Soon the hunger evolved into cravings the auto-chef hadn’t the programing to complete. She swelled and sweated and she couldn’t figure out why till she felt a kick.

“What do you do?”

I rebel against the notion that my identity is somehow defined by the work that I do and produce. It’s a simple question, “What do you do?” or “What are you?” and though I feel the inclination to respond with “writing” or “a writer” it feels a forced and disingenuous response. How am I to determine what I am? What are the criteria for which I should assess my abilities and activities to discover which defines my identity as an individual? Is it a measure of quality, which action I can perform to the highest degree with the lowest margin of error? If that is so than perhaps I should say “a cook” after years of F&B work I hardly believe that anyone in my life would disagree. Or is it a measure of quantity, how much of my daily life I devote to an action? If that is the case than I guess I should identify as a singer, but no-one would consider me a singer.

I started this blog to become a more consistent writer because despite the fact I go weeks at a time without writing it is the only activity that I yearn to do. It haunts me like a ghost that I need to exorcise. Then why does writing feel so difficult? Cooking requires so much to even begin: ingredients, appliances, space to work and time to cook. Writing needs pen and paper, and a working brain. Theoretically I should be writing at least twice as much as I cook. Writing requires not half the amount of resources as cooking so why is it my most neglected activity? It’s because when I write, I am my own limitation. If I am cooking I am limited by my ingredients, my appliances, my space and my time. I cannot make a standing rib-roast in five minutes with two eggs and a cup of yogurt. No matter what I produce in a kitchen I can always blame my resources if the product is not satisfactory. I can say the ingredients were too limited, or of poor quality, that the appliances were in disrepair. If I produce writing that is not satisfactory, I am solely to blame. A crappy pen or thin paper doesn’t make bad writing, bad ideas and poor execution does. A bad writer won’t get any better if they’re given different instruments.

 That is why I rebel, if I am a writer, if that is my identity, than my worth as an individual is tied to an activity that I’ve done periodically and shared little. It would mean that my identity isn’t known to others and that their ignorance to it is my fault. I’ve always highly regulated my speech, both what I say and how I say it. The permanence of writing has served to exasperate this behavior when I decide what to write and how to write it. I’ve fretted over nearly every sentence in this post and questioned whether something like this belongs online or in my journal. But I’ve always kept so much of my writing in my journal, for my eyes only, that my uncertainty in what to write has only grown. If I’m going to find my voice, I am going to have to be certain in what I share and to be vulnerable in my sharing until I reach that point.

My Voice

I never felt that I had a distinct voice as a writer. I know I have a unique personality in the way that I speak but never believed that I could translate it onto paper properly. Words and sentences that are so clear and focused in my speech never seem good enough on paper. How the hell I managed to get a BA in English and a double minor in History and Creative Writing while staying on the Dean’s list is a mystery. It’s been nine months since I graduated and I haven’t written anything outside of resumes and texts. I age faster when I don’t write and feel a less in control of my life.

That is why I’m starting this blog. I need to write. Not like I need air but like I need hope. A reason to keep breathing. Bizarre, that when technology makes it easy for your voice to be heard that I can be paralyzed in sharing my own. It feels overwhelming though; the millions of voices that you know are speaking and writing every day. That have spoken and written and fill the halls of book stores and libraries and internet archives. It’s a screaming ocean-chorus that will swallow your voice. Everything good has already been written, and someone has probably already written that too. So why try?

Because it needs to be said again, and again. Because books are burnt and people die, and someone needs to add their voice to that ocean-chorus. That little drop of voice is our responsibility, because that ocean-chorus can only grow if we all contribute. It might be loud but there is time enough for quiet in the grave.

Or at least that is what I’m telling myself so I’ll do this. If I’m gonna find my voice I need to believe in not just my own writing but the value of the act itself. I don’t have report cards in life anymore and no one is looking over my shoulder. It’s all up to me whether I achieve something or not and I don’t want to fail having never really tried. Like witnesses to a crime you all will hold me accountable. I’ve put it out here. I’ve started something and I have to follow through. So I’ll be here to share what stories, essays, poems and thoughts I have.